Knox County Through The Eastern Eye

The schooner Abbie Browker of Thomaston awaits loading at the Long Cove Quarry, which was operated by the Booth Brothers & Hurricane Island Granite Company from about 1873 into the 1930s. An inclined track transported stone 900 feet to the wharf. Long Cove Quarry’s output included paving stones for New York City and other municipalities, granite for Brooklyn cemeteries, and stone for the post office at Albany, New York, Saratoga monument, and Bates Building in Philadelphia, among other products.

Abbie Browker was built in 1890 by Timothy B. Bowker. At the time this photograph was taken it was owned by John Elliott & Co. of Thomaston. It met its demise in 1918 when it was stranded in Abaco in the Bahamas.

A huge planned explosion to enlarge the Long Cove quarry, with explosives set in a network of drilled tunnels, took place on November 4, 1895. Five thousand spectators and scores prominent granite men from around the country viewed the blast, which exposed 100,000 tons of granite. “The shock was tremendous in one direction, but hardly perceived in Rockland,” wrote one reporter. By 1905 the quarry measured about 1,000 feet north to south by 500 feet east to west and had a depth of 20 to 75 feet.